


The Abdication of Princess Kairi

by quietCrisis



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: (It's offscreen/before the fic starts), AU: Nomura Respects Women, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, It's about Sora but he's not in it, KH3 spoilers, Not Shippy, Re:mind compliant but not spoilery, ig?, soriku implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:41:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22517938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietCrisis/pseuds/quietCrisis
Summary: Sora is gone. Kairi laments her own lack of agency. Riku tries his best, bless his heart. AKA I watched Re:Mind and I'm still mad about the ending of KH3.
Relationships: Kairi & Riku & Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	The Abdication of Princess Kairi

Kairi sat perched on the rough bark of a familiar tree. The sun beat down from overhead; today was unseasonably warm, even for the Destiny Islands. Even dressed for the weather as she was, she could feel the sweat beading on her forehead as she squinted out into the ocean, the bright sun reflecting off the water burning dark spots in her vision. 

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting here. She’d settled into a grim kind of routine; she sat herself on the Paopu tree and watched the horizon. She had long since shaken herself of the belief that any moment, a keyhole would open in the sky and deposit Sora on the shore, sopping wet from falling in the ocean. Still, by the time she’d made peace with it, the habit had become ingrained. 

She felt the trunk of the Paopu tree sway under the weight of an additional passenger, one heavier than herself. It didn’t take a leap of logic to figure out who; she was well used to this particular weight on the tree.

“I miss him, too,” said Riku.

“I know,” she replied shortly.

She didn’t take her eyes away from the horizon as she felt her gut clench a little. As much as she cared for Riku, as close as they’d once been, things had been...odd, between them. Kairi couldn’t shake the feeling that it was mostly on her end. It was strange. Their friendship had always been predicated on Sora’s presence. Now that he was gone, there was an awkward void.

Come to think of it, had Riku and Kairi ever spoken without Sora or someone else there? She couldn’t remember.

“Riku,” said Kairi, “No offense, but I need to be alone right now.”

The tree rustled a bit as Riku shifted his weight somehow. Kairi caught only motion in her peripheral vision. 

“It's not good to suffer alone, Kairi,” said Riku’s voice. “Trust me, I know. You gotta talk to us.”

Kairi suddenly stiffened, turning to Riku on the spot. His teeth were clenched, his eyes trained on his own feet, dangling below the trunk of the tree. Perhaps trained was the wrong word. His eyes seemed to stare past them into some other memory. It wasn’t hard to guess which one.

“Yeah, I know,” Kairi said through clenched teeth. “Did you think I forgot?”

Riku looked up, clearly caught off-guard. 

“Huh?” 

He looked a bit like a fish drowning in air, Kairi reflected. She continued without pausing for any more Riku commentary.

“I remember. That year Sora was asleep, yeah? How much you suffered. How close you came to returning to the darkness.”

“Kairi, are you alright?” Riku asked. 

He reached an arm out to gently touch her shoulder, his face contorted into a mask of concern. Kairi had seen that expression on so many people lately. From Vexen and Ienzo at the castle, from Aqua whenever they saw each other, and now from Riku. That face of someone made uncomfortable by someone else’s suffering. She’d spent more time asleep than awake the past few months, just to try to avoid that look. 

“Oh, I'm fine!” she spat. “Always have been. I mean after all, it's not as if I've really suffered. During that year, I didn't even remember Sora existed, so it's not like I missed him.”

She balled her fists, feeling her fingernails dig into the soft skin of her palms. 

“It's not like you could have come to get me or anything,” she finished bitterly.

Riku looked, again, off-balance. She didn’t blame him. This was probably the first time she’d complained about anything in years. She supposed it was probably easy to forget that she had feelings too. 

“It was too dangerous. I didn't want-”

“Me to get hurt? Kidnapped maybe?”

Riku was silent. 

“I get it, Riku,” she said. “You care about Sora, and that's why you couldn't let me help you. Duh. You had to be the one to be Sora's knight in shining armor. Did you ever think that I care about you two too? That I wanted the opportunity to save someone? To do SOMETHING other than watch everyone I love suffer?”

She wrenched herself to her feet, her heavy boots balanced precariously on the tree, which bobbed a little under her weight. Riku gave her a stunned look, which she promptly ignored. 

“I wanted to help,” she spat. “You know that's WHY I wanted to wield the keyblade. Why I agreed to train with Axel even though the guy TERRIFIED me. I wanted to be able to protect you two!”

A warm feeling spread, reliably, down her cheek from her blurry eyes.

“But when the time came... I couldn't do a damn thing!” She choked up as she spoke. “I was only there to stand there and- and-”

> _“You require...motivation.”_

She doubled over from the twisting feeling in her gut, in her chest. The tears were flowing in force now, dripping and making small, wet splash marks on the tree bark and the sand below. She forced a deep, raspy breath through her clenched throat. 

“Kairi,” said Riku from a million miles away. “You're going to fall.”

“But this is my lot in life, right?” she continued, arms crossed over her chest, her hands more claws than anything, clutching at the pain in her chest. 

“I'm a princess of heart. I have to be perfect. I have to be strong. Never show fear, never show anger. Never seem hurt. Wait for the boys to save me, keep my mouth shut, look pretty, do NOTHING!”

The last word left her mouth in a raw screech, ripping itself from her like something foreign that had been trapped there, making its desperate bid for escape. The force of it drew her upright, leaned back, staring at the sky. It was that hour before twilight where the moon was plainly visible in the still-blue sky. Its image warped in her blurry vision, and for a moment she imagined it to be the shape of a heart. 

“I'm sick of it!” she screamed at the ocean of blue above, paying no heed to the steady stream of hot tears, her pounding heart, the wet feeling of her nose beginning to run. 

“If this is what it is to be a princess, I don't WANT it! You hear me, Kingdom Hearts? I abdicate! Take it BACK!”

On some level, she’d expected the last screech to echo, to in some way reflect the power, the pain behind it. Instead, it was simply absorbed into the sand, the ending drowned out by the steady crashing of the waves. The Destiny Islands engulfed her pain in silence, and all at once, the energy left her body.

Her legs shook from the strain of holding up her body, and she teetered before the sole of her boot finally lost friction on the bark and slipped. She seemed to hang in the air forever, certain she was about to topple to the ground and hit her head, break a leg, dash herself on the rocks below. She swallowed.

A hand wrapped itself around her wrist and she chanced opening her eyes. Above her was Riku, hanging onto her arm for dear life. Tears were streaming down his face, the same messy, inelegant sobbing as her. An expression of shared pain. 

No pity in sight.

“Kairi…” he said helplessly.

He hauled her upwards and her shoes managed to gain traction on the side of the tree. With Riku pulling, she scratched and scraped her way back into a seated position. 

They hugged. It just seemed like the natural thing to do; they were both openly weeping, so there was no point in holding up any barriers. Kairi reflected that this was probably the first time either of them had seen the other cry. 

“Riku,” she said, her voice hoarse from screaming and still cut through with desperate gasps for air. “Are we friends?”

He laughed through his tears, squeezed her shoulders a little tighter.

“Yeah,” he managed. “Of course we are.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Heeeey folks thanks for dropping by. This has been my first foray into ao3 but I've been feeling a lot of feelings about Kairi's narrative treatment lately, and I decided to be the good writing I want to see in the world. Tetsuya Nomura, if you're reading this, I'm available for employment. 
> 
> If you like my work, check me out on Twitter: https://twitter.com/quietCrysis


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